Herbert Tobias, Ph.D.

Herbert Tobias has extensive experience in chemical analytical instrumentation and methodology development with applications to novel measurements in order to advance research and monitoring in a variety of disciplines. These include the characterization of organic and biological materials in metabolomics and lipidomics research, stable isotopes for medical forensics and chemical tracing, atmospheric aerosols and pollutants (smog and diesel exhaust), airborne pathogens (anthrax and viruses) for homeland defense and public health, environmental monitoring, and foods analysis (wines and oils). He has developed and applied analytical techniques including separations, such as gas chromatography (GC), liquid chromatography (LC), thermal desorption, comprehensive 2D GC coupled to mass spectrometry (MS), and LC-linear ion trap mass spectrometry (LC-MSn). Specific hyphenated techniques focused on include GC-combustion isotope ratio MS (GCC-IRMS), thermal desorption particle beam (aerosol) MS (TDPBMS), single particle aerosol MS utilizing laser desorption ionization dual polarity time-of-flight MS (SPAMS). He has also employed microfabrication techniques to develop analytical high-temperature micro-reactors in fused silica to enable online chemistry for IRMS.

His current work includes studying the metabolites and lipids (metabolomics and lipidomics) in children to characterize and follow their nutritional status. In addition, he is involved in anti-doping in sports research, in which he has developed steroid isotopic standards for calibration and quality control in the anti-doping laboratories in more than 30 countries. Moreover, he has been developing advanced analytical instrumentation for detection of synthetic steroid use (i.e. testosterone) in sport and events such as the Olympics, FIFA, baseball and cycling.